Creative Metaphors in Political Discourse

Theoretical considerations on the basis of Swiss Speeches

Abstract

This article develops a basic tool for stylistic metaphor analysis to assess the role of creative metaphors in a corpus of political speeches. Starting with a general discussion of creativity in political discourse it provides a definition and six basic strategies of creative metaphor uses. This definition and the strategies allow the identification of creative and conventional metaphors in speeches by two Swiss Federal Councillors, Christoph Blocher and Moritz Leuenberger. The data suggest that there are indeed not only differences between the speakers but also between speeches. Finally this article will discuss the contribution of stylistics to a critical assessment of speeches.